The Armenian Highlands (Armenian: Հայկական լեռնաշխարհ, translit.Haykakan leṙnašxarh; also known as the Armenian Upland, Armenian plateau, Armenian tableland,[1] or simply Armenia) is the central-most and highest of three land-locked plateaus[1] that together form the northern sector of the Middle East. To its west is the Anatolian plateau which rises slowly from the lowland coast of the Aegean Sea and converges with the Armenian Highlands to the east of Cappadocia. To its southeast is the Iranian plateau, where the elevation drops rapidly by about 600 metres (2,000 ft) to 1,500 metres (5,000 ft) above sea level.[1]The Caucasus extends to the northeast of the Armenian Highlands. To the southwest of the Armenian Highlands is Upper Mesopotamia.

The natural borders of the Armenian plateau and its peripheral regions according to H. F. B. Lynch (1901).

From 4000 to 1000 BC, tools and trinkets of copper, bronze and iron were commonly produced in this region and traded in neighboring lands where those metals were less abundant.[citation needed] It is also traditionally believed to be one of the possible locations of the Garden of Eden.[9]

According to Richard Hovannisian, the Armenian Genocide was the "physical elimination of the Armenian people and most of the evidence of their ever having lived on the great highland called the Armenian Plateau, to which the perpetrator side soon assigned the new name of Eastern Anatolia".[15] Since the Armenian Genocide and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, it has been the boundary region of Turkey, Iran and the Soviet Union and, since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Armenia, and parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan.[11]

^ abcdHewsen, Robert H. "The Geography of Armenia" in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century. Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.) New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, pp. 1-17